Learning novel transitive verbs in causative action events: A cross-linguistic comparison between English- and Japanese-speaking infants

This study investigated whether typologically different languages, English and Japanese, influence the early representations of novel transitive verbs in dynamic causative events. We hypothesized that Japanese, with its syntactic and pragmatic advantages for verb learning, facilitates this process earlier than English. Using a habituation method with a three-switch design, we compared Japanese-speaking 20-month-olds with their English-speaking counterparts to determine whether Japanese-speaking infants map novel transitive verbs onto actions only, similar to adults, earlier than English-speaking infants. The results showed that Japanese-speaking infants mapped the novel transitive verbs onto actions only, whereas English-speaking infants mapped them onto both actions and objects affected by the actions. This finding suggests that Japanese-speaking infants acquire adult-like representations of novel transitive verbs earlier than their English-speaking counterparts, providing evidence that properties of languages affect the development of initial representations of novel transitive verbs in infants.